North Carolina District Puts Lunch Debtors on a Diet

It's not exactly bread and water, but the Charlotte-Mecklenburg,
N.C., district is taking some heat for a new policy that puts students
on a diet of soup or peanut butter and jelly until they settle their
tabs with the school meals program.

The 99,000-student school system expects to end the year with a
$20,000 deficit in its $35 million nutrition program because so many
elementary and middle school children aren't paying for meals,
according to district administrators. The program ended last school
year $15,000 in the red.

So the district is cracking down—still providing indebted
students with meals, but limiting their menu options.

The policy, which has been adopted by 15 schools already and becomes
mandatory for all elementary and middle schools next fall, has prompted
a handful of parents to write angry letters to the district.

But William H. Haygood, the system's director of child-nutrition
services, said he expects the plan to stick.

"Public schools get public opinion, and the fact is that a lot of
parents feel the meal program should be there whether they pay for it
or not," Mr. Haygood said. "This is going to work perfectly, but to
make an omelet you have to break a few eggs."

For the past four years, the meals plan has operated on a debit
system that assigns each student an account with a personal
identification number. Breakfast for middle and elementary school
pupils is $1, while an elementary school lunch is $1.75 and a middle
school lunch is $1.90.

Parents can send money with their children to be credited to the
accounts, Mr. Haygood said, and notices are automatically sent home
with the children when their balances runs low.

But that's where the problems began.

"Either the notes never made it home or parents chose not to
respond," Mr. Haygood said.

In the meantime, students were allowed to buy meals on credit.
Nutrition-program managers were told to enforce a $10 cap on deficit
spending for each student, but the order was never official policy and
was largely ignored, Mr. Haygood said.

The nutrition program's mounting debt spurred district officials to
enact a new plan that lets children go only $5 into debt. At that
point, parents are sent written notices again. If they don't respond
within two days, their children are put on a limited plan.

When the indebted students bring money, they can order from the
regular cafeteria menu. If not, it's juice and toast with butter and
jelly for breakfast, and either soup, crackers, and juice or
peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and juice for lunch.

Students are not asked to repay the cafeteria for the scaled-down
meals, and the policy doesn't apply to students in the federal
government's free and reduced-price meals program.

Growing Trend?

With more and more districts instituting electronic payment systems
in their cafeterias, Charlotte-Mecklenburg's approach is not unusual,
said Barry Sackin of the American School Food Service Association.

"They're just being good fiscal managers. The kids come first, but
as a district you also reach a point where you say, 'We can't afford to
do this,'" said Mr. Sackin, the association's director of government
affairs. "On the other hand, as with any other business, there's going
to be some uncorrectable debt, but we're not talking about a lot of
money."

Charlotte-Mecklenburg's policy appears to be working. When it was
first put into place at Piney Grove Elementary School, the school sent
home a note on a Friday and all but two accounts were paid up the
following Monday, according to district officials.

But others say the policy is unfair to students. Mr. Haygood said
the district had heard from about nine angry parents so far. "The
response has been small, but each letter has been inflamed," he said.
"And the students who haven't been paying are the ones whose families
can presumably afford to pay."

Vol. 19, Issue 33, Page 7

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